What happens when you throw a challenge to the brightest minds from across India to use the social web for their campus? You get the Google ‘Get Social?’ Marketing Challenge - that was designed to give students a real-world flavor of how to build, nurture and leverage social communities to transform the way campuses interact internally & externally.

Teams from 37 premier campuses weaved the social web & its tools into the everyday fabric of campus life. In a matter of few weeks online communities for existing students, alumni and faculty were established serving uses as varied as - digital notice boards, instant alerts on schedules and even forums for exchanging class notes!

As expected, the student teams came up with some innovative uses, and some brilliant ones were:

IIT Patna used Google Drive’s doc sharing with Google+ Circle’s to set up a common folder where 800 notes got uploaded in under 72-hrs!

IIM Shillong ensured that group studies continued across hostel buildings even when it was pouring outside and alumni speakers who couldn't squeeze the long flight into their work schedules still met with the students through a widespread use of Google+ Hangouts.

IIT Guwahati went a step ahead and launched their own Internet TV channel – ‘GTV’ by partnering with the RadioG team and livestreaming their campus radio channel onto a YouTube.

IIT Patna – used Google Maps and Google+ to crowdsource a map marked with all the eating addas around campus with detailed information on what to eat and even the most convenient ATMs in case students run out of money. This was a boon for fresher’s and seniors alike!

IIT Khargapur led the way in connecting with their Alumni – they not only drove an alumni speaker series through Google+ Hangouts but also dug up decades old photo albums – scanning them and sharing batch specific alumni circles to rekindle alumni conversations within themselves and with the campus

IIM Indore decided to make their quiz festival virtual and conducted a 20-day festival that saw enthusiastic participation from all the other campuses.

Over 6 months the campus teams built communities, on boarded influential stakeholders within students & faculty, created content that was both relevant & engaging, monitored their efforts daily, iterated and reiterated – living the highly dynamic life of a marketer in today’s social world.

Even though we had announced the winners on Google+, we want to take this opportunity to honour their contribution/ achievements more widely. The top 3 campus teams that proved they didn't just understand the social web, but were master of using it are - IIM Shillong, IIT Guwahati, IIT Patna